Extinction?
by Todd's Pet
Summary: An experimental little story designed to make you wonder. It poses more questions than it answers, but it's meant to - I want it to make you start asking yourself, What if?


Extinction?

I was only twenty-one when the war started. Before then I was like any other just setting out on life: young, optimistic and excited, with my whole life ahead of me, just bursting with endless possibilities – the world was my oyster.

Then the Wraith came.

Sitting with friends in a crowded canteen at college, we watched eagerly on TV as the first Wraith hive ship arrived. I'd been a bit of a sci-fi geek and me and my friends had been so excited at the prospect of our first contact with real aliens from outer space. But they weren't friendly. In fact they were downright predatory – and we were their prey.

No one had ever heard of them before then and I remembered the day as if it were only yesterday, though I'm in my fifties now… I think… It's been hard to keep track of time when I thought I was the only person left alive in the world.

The war started almost that very first day, when the first hive had been swiftly followed by hundreds more, crowded around our little planet like bees around a honey-pot. The Wraith had turned up thinking they could casually cull a percentage of the population then stroll off again, to return a few centuries later to top up their food stocks. They hadn't counted on us Earthlings being a bit more stubborn than the Pegasus humans they were used to. We fought back.

At first our governments were cocky, arrogant – we'd been top dog in our galaxy and never knew what it was like to be kept down by another species higher up the food chain than us. So we never thought for one second that we wouldn't win.

Although we outnumbered the Wraith thousands to one, they out-gunned and out-maneuvered us with their superior technology and their predatory cunning, honed by thousands of years ensuring their place at the top of the food chain in their own galaxy. We didn't stand a chance.

When our leaders realized this wasn't going to be a straightforward pissing contest between two equally matched foes, once they'd had their noses rubbed in it a few times and understood the enormity of what we were fighting for, they lost hope. We became leaderless; it was every man for himself. And yet we continued to fight back… we fought until there was no one left to fight. And then we carried on fighting, though now the battle was for our own survival in a world devastated by years of vicious war.

We knew we were doomed but still those of us that were left made the Wraith fight for every inch of ground they took from us. We never gave in to despair. We wept, we prayed, we said goodbye to our loved ones and then we threw ourselves into the fray, never surrendering. We were magnificent. I heard it said that even the Wraith could not help but be moved by our stubborn will to survive in the face of insurmountable odds. We did this for ten years and we never ran out of courage. But in the end we ran out of people – hell, we even ran out of wraith to fight eventually.

It was they who understood that we were on the brink of annihilating each other; that both species teetered on the precipice of extinction. When the Wraith stopped fighting, we went to ground, hid from the pitifully few of them that remained, developed guerilla tactics just to survive. The world that we'd known lay in ruins and we lived like scavengers on what little we could find amongst the rubble that was all that was left of our great civilizations. One by one I watched my comrades die – of disease from the filth we lived in, from injuries in numerous skirmishes with small bands of hungry wraith, or simply from losing hope and the will to live – until the day I realized I was all alone, the only person, human or wraith, left alive on the entire planet. Or at least, that's what it felt like.

I've no idea how I lasted as long as I did, wandering the world, looking for signs of other people, but finding nothing. I'd started out purposefully, keeping records, trying as far as possible to work out how many countries I'd covered and how many days, weeks and months had gone by. I didn't really know when I started to lose track but, inevitably, I did.

And then I found the wraith. He was lying face up on the river bank, the lower half of his body in the water, his legs swaying back and forth with the waves as they gently lapped the shore. His eyes were closed. Cautiously, I crept closer to him, drawing the sword I kept strapped to my back at all times. At first I thought he was dead. Slowly, one nervous step at a time, I reached where he was. He didn't move. I lunged one foot across and stood, straddling the prone body, my sword held aloft and ready to strike. I should make sure he's dead, shouldn't I? Just in case. His eyes flew open and my heart rushed into my throat. I should have driven the sword through his heart, pinned him to the ground like a butterfly in a glass case. But I stood there motionless, just staring into those yellow reptile eyes, watching as a million emotions swept over them; incongruously human emotions, like fear, despair, confusion and hopelessness.

As if it were too heavy for me to hold any longer, I lowered my arms and let the sword hang by my side. I think I'd expected him to make a grab for it, or for me – and I think I was lonely enough to want him to end it. But he didn't. He just lay there, looking at me with those liquid gold eyes, until he finally said, "Finish it. Kill me. I am the last of my kind."

"You and me both," I told him and held my hand out to him. To my surprise, he took it, but we were both too weak to pull him upright, so I knelt close beside him and, putting my arms under his, I slowly and clumsily pulled him from the river, onto the grassy bank, and propped him up against a tree.

He never took his eyes from me as I set up camp where we were, building a make-shift lean-to shelter over him and setting a fire just outside it, watching me constantly as I set a can hanging on a green branch over the fire and emptied the contents of two packets into it, adding water from the river. For my part, I watched the horizon as twilight turned the sky from azure to indigo, intent on the contents of the old tin can. I scooped some of the hot gloop out with a cup and, without thinking, held it out to the wraith. When he didn't take it, I turned to look at him and his amber eyes swirled with conflicting emotions of self pity and contempt.

"Sorry," I muttered, genuinely apologetic, and laid the cup down at my side, out of sight. "Why haven't you tried to feed on me?" I asked him.

"I am too weak even to move," he said, the confession clearly costing his ego dearly. Then something approaching trust flickered briefly across his face and he added, "Besides, what good would it do? We are the last of our kind. Feeding on you… will give me a few weeks at most… before I die anyway."

"How do you know you're the last? Perhaps there are a few left somewhere…"

"I would know… telepathy… I feel it… I am alone…"

We both fell silent for several moments, then the wraith spoke again. "Why did you not kill me?" I shrugged. I really didn't know why. He weakly indicated the can over the fire with one raised finger and went on, "Eat. You can still survive, human."

"My name is Sian," I replied. "You don't have names, do you?"

"We have names," he answered weakly, "But they're only for…" His voice trailed off, his head fell to the side and his eyes closed. I crept over to where he lay and listened carefully; he was still breathing. Sliding my arm under his shoulders, I pulled him close; for warmth for me as much as for him, I told myself, as I slept the night through holding a wraith in my arms.

The next day I woke abruptly, suddenly remembering where I was, and craned my neck to look at the face of the wraith whose head was still resting on my shoulder. Stiffly, he turned his head up to look at me, his eyes already growing dull. My own eyes flicked to my chest, where his right hand lay limply against my sternum. Unable to stifle my instincts, I grasped his wrist.

He merely smiled weakly and said, "I could have fed upon you any time through the night."

"Why didn't you?" I asked, and let his hand drop back onto my chest.

"For a few pitiful weeks… of drawn-out pain… before inevitable death? What a waste that would be…"

"Why would you care if my death is a waste if it meant you could live even a few weeks longer?"

"Because there may be a way for us both…" His voice was barely a whisper yet he forced himself to go on. "It is a rare thing for a wraith… to know the moment of death… to have time to give himself… to a brother…"

"You said there are no other wraith left."

"You will have to do…" He pressed his feeding hand against my chest and I drew a sharp breath. "Trust me…" he said. For some reason I could not fathom, I did.

Then my brain exploded in a kaleidoscope of sensation; sight, sound, smell, taste, touch – and probably a few other senses I didn't know I had. From the sudden chaos of overwhelming stimuli, the essence of him slowly began to crystallize as he poured his very being into me, merging his with mine. I could feel him rushing into every cell in my body until I was full to overflowing with all the memories and knowledge of his thousands of years of living. The sensation shifted slightly, my equilibrium titling, and I understood that he was giving me his life force, all of it. Before I lost consciousness I had the answer to at least two questions many humans had asked during all those years of war: Wraith have souls as well as names.

I lay for a long time, just holding him, my hand covered his as it lay cold on my chest, as if I were trying to squeeze every last drop of him into me. I was not the first human female to lie with him like this, fingers stroking through his long, soft hair. I remembered it; saw it through his eyes, the memory sweet and fond enough to bring a tear to the corner of my eye.

But I knew I had to move on and set about clearing the camp. By the time I'd finished the stone cairn over the wraith's body, I was not as tired as I thought I would be – in fact I had never felt stronger. Placing a large, flat stone on the mound, I scratched wraith symbols onto it with another stone. Then I prodded the scar on my chest with a fingertip and rubbed the rapidly clotting blood into the marks. It seemed fitting to write his name in my blood from the scar he had put there when he told it to me.

Crouched for a few moments at the foot of the grave I wondered what rituals his brothers might have had; if any other human had ever done this in memory of a wraith. As I stood, I heard his voice in my head; not the dull and rasping whisper he had spoken to me with, yet I recognized him though his voice was now strong and deep, brimming with rich layers and confidence. It made me feel good just to hear it.

"We must go now, find food and search for more of your kind."

"We?"

"You will never be lonely again."

"How do you know I was lonely?"

"I live in you now; we are one."

"How do I know you're not just a figment of my imagination, or that I've finally gone insane?"

"You don't, and you might have," he replied and I could hear the wry smile in his voice. "But search deep in your – our – mind and you will know the truth of it."

He kept his word and I never felt lonely, not once through all the years that I circled the world three times over, searching in vain for signs of life other than the two of us. Keeping records again, I knew I had covered virtually the entire planet, making full use of his technical knowledge to rig up abandoned vehicles so I could cover more ground more quickly and cross narrow sea-straights between continents with a fighting chance of survival.

I was down to my last hope as I crossed the sea around Diomede, headed for Alaska…

-oOo-

"And so here I am…"

The Major looks down at the exhausted and bedraggled woman sitting in the tiny, wooden chair in front of him. Her story is almost as crazy as the very fact of finding her, a middle-aged woman with a Scottish accent, wandering around alone in the deep, cruel, winter snows of the Yukon. How she managed to get this far is nothing short of a miracle. She's obviously strong, but seems harmless enough, though clearly a little unhinged.

Perhaps once she rests and gets a few decent hot meals inside her, she might be useful around the camp. As the last outpost of the only humans left alive, they need all hands on deck in their efforts to rebuild mankind.

"I'll have some food sent to you, ma'am, and we'll talk again in the morning. In the meantime, try to get some sleep."

The Major leaves the room and she stands up and paces for a moment in the silence, pulling the blanket closer around her shoulders, and then sitting on the bunk in the corner, restless and agitated. She looks down at her hands and scratches at a raised welt in the palm of her right hand that is starting to open and weep.

"I didn't know that could happen," he tells her inside her head. "It seems I've given you more than just my thoughts and memories…"

"We must be cunning and careful," she says, rocking gently back and forth on the edge of the bunk.

"Yes," he agrees, "We're going to have to feed soon, my love…"

"Not to worry," she reassures, "There are enough of them to keep us fed for a very long time, and I noticed children; they're already breeding the next batch…"

THE END


End file.
